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Turkle and the technological interaction
Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, chapter two is titled “Alive Enough” here Turkle explores how children react with toys expressing forms of emotion. “Me Scared”. To anyone who ever owned a Furby this may be familiar phrase. A Furby, when held upside down expresses that its “scared”, much like any human would do in a similar situation. “People are willing to be carrying the Barbie around by the feet, slinging it by the hair...no problem...” “But in the case of the Furby, people will “hold the Furby upside down for thirty seconds or so, but when it starts crying and saying it’s scared, most people feel guilty and turn it over.” (Turkle 45) Yet, “scared”? How can a toy have emotions how can a toy feel anything at all? The truth of the matter is that they don’t, obviously, but the people interacting with them and creating them generally do, making this plea for help one that is at the utmost hard to ignore. “Kara, a woman in her fifties, reflects on holding a moaning Furby that says its scared. She finds it distasteful, “not to because I believe that the Furby is really scared, but because I’m not willing to hear anything talk like that and respond by continuing my behavior. It feels to me that I could be hurt if I keep doing this.” For Kara, “That is not what I do... In that moment, the Furby comes to represent how I treat creatures.” (Turkle, 46) What makes Turkle’s study interesting is the child’s mind. Whereas adults tend to formulate a thick layer of skin that sometimes hinders the imaginative mind. Children however hear a toy interact with them, need them, express emotions in ways that humans do and are already trying to make links between the two, hence the phrase “Alive Enough”. In the case of the Furby study children were sent home with a Furby to take care of for a few weeks. Turkle discovered that by doing this children became attached to the Furby, but not just any Furby, that Furby, they one they were originally sent home with. In a few cases the Furbies malfunctioned and had to be reset (taking out the batteries) which starts the Furby all over again. But, in a child’s eyes this was killing it. Children that went through this revival claimed the new Furby that had emerged from the resetting simply just wasn’t the same, it had not gone through the same experiences, and would have to “re-learn” everything they taught it. What many don’t realize is that while the Furby instructions state that the more you interact with it the more it learns from you. This sadly, is solely a marketing scheme. The beauty of the Furby being a generated toy is that the Furby evolves without any interaction, as it is programed to do so. The concepts of computers having experiences, as suggested by the children in the Furby study, is an interesting concept. Objects, such as computers exist, they take up space yes, but they don’t “live”. Turkle mentioned humanoid robot Nexi (humanoid simply means representing human appearance). In 1983 Turkle conversed with a rather insightful thirteen year old boy Bruce about robotic connections and experiences. To Bruce, robots are created to be perfect; imperfections and machines are always frowned upon. Humans however are expected to make mistakes. Failure is how we learn, how we gain life experience, experiences are just that an experience, something that cannot be programed, it has to be felt, which is another thing a robot cannot do, feel. Also in the 1980’s Turkle talked with twelve year old boy David who said: “How can I talk about sibling rivalry to something that never had a mother?” The question that remains unanswered is within machine programing. Can a programmer that has emotion themselves program something to mimic feelings? Or would those rendered emotions always be an impostor to the actual experience? Thoughts by: Breana Simmons Turkle, Sherry. "Alive Enough." Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic, 2010. 45-46. Print. Image from: http://hackedgadgets.com/2006/01/04/20/